


A Method to My Madness

by doroteya



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, F/M, Getting Back Together, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:10:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13628346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doroteya/pseuds/doroteya
Summary: Ouma thinks his untimely habit of watching Kiibo is like a car accident. He knows that watching will only make it worse, that he'll fall deeper and deeper into a mess he knows he can't fix. But a niggling feeling in the back of his head tells him not to look away.Like a car accident, Ouma thinks, Kiibo is fascinating.~A modern day AU (with a hint of sci-fi) in which Kiibo gets into an accident, and consequently, he's turned into a robot in order to be saved. Ouma runs away to cope with the guilt, only to return three years later without any plan on how to deal with a certain robot whose pale blue eyes remind him of an empty sky.





	A Method to My Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is the first fanfic I've ever written, as well as the first story I've actually ever planned to finish. I already have the outline finished though, it's just a matter of putting everything into words. 
> 
> Shout-out to one of my sweet friends, who encourages me to keep writing, to my patient, awesome literature role-model who answers all my questions and gives me advice, and to tumblr user kablequeen21, since their kiibouma cornfield fic was my initial inspiration for this work. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“Kokichi…?” 

Ouma turned a smidge, eyes leading the direction his head moved. He’d frozen up when heard the voice, so familiar, yet so unexpected. He thought his voice would sound like an automated machine, or like a well-made teleprompter. He hadn’t expected it to sound so human. So accurate. 

A steel hand rested shyly on his shoulder. The steel was cold, but it set his shoulder aflame. Ouma didn’t need to turn to know who it was. 

Pale blue met violet. They blinked at him, somewhere between somber and bewildered. Broken, maybe. 

Ouma recalled what Kaede said the previous night. 

A nasty grin cracked Ouma’s face, practiced. It was the fakest one he had ever employed. “Hey, Kiiboy! It’s good to see you!” 

~

When Ouma opened his eyes, it hurt.

They cracked open one at a time as white trickled into his vision, a vicious contrast to the darkness beneath his eyelids. Dimly he could hear the steady beep of a heart monitor somewhere to his right. Once his eyes were fully opened, he met the blindingly empty ceiling of a hospital room and hissed, promptly screwing his eyes shut, until they peeked open once again, this time less sensitive.

On that evening at 6:07 PM, under synthetic lights, Kokichi Ouma woke to a hospital room without windows. 

Ouma blinked wearily and found his body aching all over. He looked down at himself for inspection. Bandages crisscrossed all over his chest and his legs, and as the scent of iron filled his nose, Ouma realized they carried the dead stench of blood. His blood. It only made sense that it was his, because the dull throbbing in the wrapped appendages seemed to say as much. Ouma gingerly lifted a hand to his forehead. His fingers only needed to brush the assaulted area to incite a wince from him. There were bandages there too. His hand lingered awkwardly near his temples as he processed the information. Apparently, only his arms were intact.

Ouma scrutinized his memories with his thumb and index finger pressed to the bridge of his nose, but came up with nothing. Last he recalled, he was in Kiibo's dorm room with the guy himself. They were talking about their graduation. 

When he tried plunging deeper into his memories, a sudden pang shot through his head like a metal bullet. Ouma gave up remembering for the time being. 

Just then, he noticed a meek woman standing by the door. She fiddled with the bottom of her white apron that laid atop a pink collared shirt. Her uniform told Ouma she was a nurse. The hues of her hair were purple like wine gone stagnant, and it cascaded around her like a waterfall, with the tips of her hairs cleaved. She shifted weight on each foot, appearing to be in the perpetual state of stage fright. Her eyes darted all around the room, and she let out a squeak when their eyes finally met. 

“Hey, uh.” Ouma feigned innocence with a pointer finger hovering by his chin, “Miss? Am I in a hospital? What happened?” 

A trembling hand rose to her chest defensively. “Y-y-you…you’re alright…d-don’t be afraid…” 

“What year is it?”

The nurse averted her eyes and mumbled through her stutter. “Two thousand eighteen. I-if you were wondering, you were admitted into this hospital yesterday night. It’s about e-e-evening right now.” 

She risked a glance at Ouma. For a moment, her nerves settled down, and her features rearranged into a melancholic frown. 

Ouma readjusted the blanket on his bed. “Is something wrong?” 

“No…it’s nothing. I’m sorry, I’m more used to dealing with younger patients.”

“Then why are you here?” 

“I thought you were a child, so I volunteered to watch over your room. You and your friend look so young…yet…your friend needs…” 

“Miss, what happened?” 

Her gaze dropped to the floor as the trembling returned, the glass having reached its tipping point. The meek nurse dressed in white and pink muttered something inaudible before throwing the door open and rushing out. The door closed before Ouma could get a word in. 

Ouma narrowed his eyes at nothing in particular, upset that he was unsuccessful at extracting all his answers from the nurse. 

There wasn't much else in the nearly-vacant hospital room to clue Ouma in to his situation. A potted ribbon fern mocked him in the corner. There was a desk planted in the center of the room adjacent to an empty hospital bed. Another desk laid directly to Ouma’s right, a phone lying on top. The walls were stark white, and the floor had a lustrous sheen. Everything was wonderfully bleak and drab. If he wasn't going to die from his injuries, he'd surely suffocate in this cramped box dubbed a hospital room and die of boredom right then and there. 

His savior came in the form of the soft click of a lock. The door opened, and Ouma perked up as a doctor strode in, all white coat and specs, with a clipboard in hand. He had steely eyes and a clean, streamlined haircut. A tag pinned to his breast read 'Dr. Munakata.' He slid into a wheeled chair and rolled up next to Ouma, black, pristine work shoes squeaking against the floor. Quick hands pulled tools Ouma couldn’t name from out of the inside of his coat. The procedures were all very simple but necessary. He hastily checked Ouma's eyes, ears, and mouth, pressed his stethoscope against Ouma's chest, then sat back in his seat. A man who was clear, concise, and to the point. Probably washed his hands after shaking them with new clients. Fit to be numbed by death and numbed to death. 

Ouma smiled. The doctor reminded Ouma of his dad.

"Alright, Kokichi Ouma, let's see." The doctor flipped through a thick packet of papers as he prattled on. "Age twenty-one, a senior at HPU, majors in architecture. A mom, deceased dad, and no siblings."

Ouma's smile turned sly. He stretched his arms out past his knees and sprawled them across the bed. "Wow, you're good at this Doc! Can you tell me anything else? Like why the hell I might be in the hospital?"

"Mr. Ouma," the doctor said unfazed, his eyes trained on one spot on the paper. "Yesterday, around ten at night, you left the university to drive to a nearby bar."

Ouma tilted his head. "Hmmm, I did? Was I with a friend by any chance?”

"Yes. Mr. Ouma, how much do you remember?" 

“Everything,” Ouma answered smoothly. 

“Is that the truth?” 

“How rude. Taking the patient’s word into question, are you? You dare doubt these cute, wholesome eyes?” 

The doctor drummed his fingers against the desk impatiently. He clearly did. 

Ouma relented with a flick of the wrist. “Yeah, you got me. The nurse from earlier mentioned something about a friend of mine. I don’t actually remember anything.” 

“Nurse Mikan,” the doctor nodded. “So you can’t remember anything from last night?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” 

“What’s the last thing that comes to mind?” 

Ouma couldn't recall the exact events of his last memory. He spoke, intentionally vague. "Well, I remember being at the dorms. Maybe I brought a friend. Maybe we drove to a bar, maybe we didn't. Is that enough for you to tell me already?"

The doctor glided his pen through a sentence and scribbled something next to it. "Your memories must be in a scramble because of the incident. I ask that you stay calm and don’t panic. Sometimes the news sends the patients back into shock.”

“What, did I get cornered by a bunch of thugs? I’m right, aren’t I? I knew they were jealous of my hair.” Ouma waved his hands in the air like a bubbly child. 

The doctor wrote a couple of bullet points next to the last sentence he wrote. 

“Did someone take a video? Oh man, I hope they did. Was there a lot of blood? Because I feel like someone fucked me in the face and ran me over with a wheelchair.” 

The doctor unclipped his stack of papers from the clipboard and set them on his desk. 

“And if they did, I really want to know who did it, because I’d like them to know how it feels to get fucked in the face and ran over by a—“

The doctor clicked his pen.

“Mr. Ouma, you were unfortunately on the collision course of an SUV weaving traffic. Your car was driven back into someone else's and rammed into a guard rail. You and your friend were knocked unconscious. It was a messy scene. Fortunately, you only received minor cuts and bruises, the worst of your injuries being mild head trauma. But you are far from the red zone. With a lot of rest, you should be fine as long as you obtain a good rest each night for three months. If you're still feeling headaches, contact me through the phone number on this card. We'll meet up and possibly prescribe you some medications." 

The doctor plucked a card from his breast pocket and held it in Ouma's direction. 

A pause.

Ouma's eyes widened by a fraction as the blanket's fabric audibly bunched up in his fist. "...Huh?"

The answer he expected was something more along the lines of falling victim to alcohol poisoning and subsequently getting mugged. Ouma definitely didn’t anticipate something as absurdly ordinary and grim as a car crash. It would have been less shocking if the doctor told him he got hit by a motorcycle while walking to the dorms instead. 

Ouma considered himself desensitized to car accidents. As he sat in the hospital bed, drinking in the reality of his situation, he still did. There were a lot things he considered himself desensitized to, like guilt-tripping, self-esteem attacks, subconscious competitors in the social arena, and the list went on. In the end, Ouma knew experiencing an accident himself would hurt way more than he could ever predict, but he didn’t want to let it hurt. He’d rather run. Ouma had been sitting in the theatre, watching a movie he mistakenly chose, when all of a sudden he was thrown into the screen’s fictional world and instructed to act as the tragic hero because someone simply needed to. A role that dictated a life haunted by pity and attention and bravery. He was unlucky – or lucky – enough to be chosen.

Ouma started to realize just how unprepared he was to play the position. 

"Mr. Ouma." 

Ouma jerked back into consciousness. The doctor’s card was thrust into his free hand rather suddenly as the doctor waited for a reaction. 

Ouma struggled to maintain his lofty demeanor, aiming to suppress the heavy drop in his stomach. A grin split his face as he forced his body to relax, the blanket loosening in his grip. He held the card delicately between two fingers, using it to gesture at the doctor. The only tell of his anxiety was the slight edge to his voice. “Are you telling the truth? You sure I didn’t collapse from alcohol poisoning? You could tell me whatever you wanted to and I wouldn’t know if you were lying or not. I know you doctors love doing that.” 

The doctor let out a hefty sigh, rolling his chair back to his desk. He set the clipboard down and began rifling through a drawer of files. "We had your bloodstream checked. Anyone admitted into this hospital undergoes a blood examination. We know you've never consumed direct alcohol. You never got to reach that bar. Sorry, Mr. Ouma," he added after glancing back and catching the crack in Ouma's facade. “It would do you some good to keep those opinions to yourself, by the way.” 

A wide envelope appeared in the doctor’s hand, and he fanned out its contents at the foot of Ouma’s bed for the two of them to see. There were five photos. When Ouma saw what they were of, he felt as though someone had slapped him in the face. The ominous feeling surged from his gut to his throat like bile. His mouth parted slightly in somber disbelief as his eyes swept the photos. An array of emotions from aggressive horror to scathing acceptance brutally assaulted him and Ouma, feeling disoriented and nauseous, wasn’t quite sure what to think. He wanted to run out of the room and dry heave until graduation day, dismiss everything as a bad memory, and head back to the dorms to tease Kiibo, but the cold, ugly feeling of dread eating its way out from inside him left him numb and his mind reeling. 

It told him this was real. 

The scenes captured in each photo were difficult to see since they were taken at night, but the blue and red lights from the policemen’s cars functioned as a hazy light source. If Ouma closed his eyes, he might have seen those flashing colors underneath his eyelids. He might have relived those scenes, but he commanded himself to focus on what was in front of him instead. Ouma recognized his car almost immediately. The red hunk of horribly dented scrap metal with the windows smashed to bits laying past police tape was undoubtedly his Madza 3, in some kind of morbid sandwich between two other cars that Ouma found himself hard pressed to care about. 

He remembered the day he pestered Kiibo into choosing a car to buy with him and the way that Kiibo’s eyes shone at the Madza 3 the moment he laid eyes on it. He remembered the day he pestered Kiibo into celebrating their graduation two days early and shoved him into the car so they could say they got drunk before their friends did. 

Ouma remembered. 

He kind of wished he didn’t. 

The lack of people in each photo failed to answer the most pressing question at the forefront of his mind, but the doctor beat him to it. 

“The reasoning behind your minor injuries stems from the fact that your friend shielded you from most of the glass. You were found pinned underneath his body. That friend goes by the name of Kiibo Iidabashi. He attends HPU as well.”

Ouma’s breath hitched, and his fears were confirmed. 

“Are you starting to remember the crash?”

He was going to lie no, but for some reason his throat closed up, and a hoarse whine, barely audible, was the only thing that escaped his mouth. A string was pulled, and his face drawn together by cockiness dissolved into vacancy. Vaguely he wondered if that useless, meek nurse gave him a huge dose of anesthesia when he wasn’t looking. Ouma felt numb. His eyes were stone as they gazed aimlessly at a point on the hospital bed, the throbbing pain in his arms and head now a distant pain. 

Ouma hated it. He hated how Kiibo was always thinking ahead, sacrificing himself for others. 

In a similar light, Kiibo communicated his distaste towards Ouma’s behavior that caused people to antagonize him. Pushing them over their boundaries. Poking at vulnerable topics. Exposing their flaws and interrogating them on why they did what they did. 

‘Not everyone reads in between the lines, Kokichi,’ Kiibo had said once. 

Ouma translated it as: ‘Not everyone is like me.’ 

A day later, Ouma approached Kaede and asked if she really believed the two were close. The pianist supposed their arguments only brought them closer. She told him that he and Kiibo played each other like a marvelous duet with the way they bickered and fed off each other’s energy, pushing and pulling at a steady pace that went back and forth. It was a melodious relationship concocted from a witty kind of chemistry that regularly kept the two on their toes. Ouma then told Kaede she was a piano freak, and she walked away with a huff in search of Shuichi while Ouma went his own way and looked for Kiibo. 

Ouma and Kiibo befriended each other in their sophomore of college – or more accurately, Ouma befriended Kiibo. It took a whole year and half for Kiibo to reciprocate their friendship, but it was beyond worth it. The fact that they had attended the same high school meant they weren’t completely foreign to the other’s presence may have helped. 

Ouma never felt happier. There were nights when Kiibo’s roommate was out, and during those times Ouma and Kiibo had conversations that lasted late into night, and more often than not, into the morning. Kiibo always fell asleep mid-sentence and Ouma tossed a blanket over him before setting his alarm and crashing on the couch. When morning came, Ouma made pancakes – their quality was just short of being charcoal – and Kiibo stole the cooking pan away from Ouma to chide him. They laughed over his burned at cooking and Kiibo proposed that Ouma purposely messed up just to annoy him. Ouma lied no, and then admitted that he had lied. Kiibo facepalmed. It was those interactions that kept Ouma reading his textbooks, kept him sane when none of his grades reached his standards, kept him passionate when he questioned himself. Kiibo was a dream.

And here Ouma was, being told that he destroyed it all because of the one night Lady Luck stuck her middle finger back at him. His mom always said he’d pay for his impulsiveness one day, but he never knew the consequences were so damning. 

The world was a hot, shaky blur. A living nightmare. Ouma couldn’t see anything. He lowered his head into his hands. 

Red staining white flashed in his mind’s eye. 

“Don’t force yourself.” The doctor took his silence as confirmation, thinking it was the car crash that brought tears to Ouma’s eyes. He wasn’t entirely wrong. “You’ll strain your brain and cause migraines.” 

Migraines were the least of his worries. Ouma’s dead eyes shifted ever so slightly so they rested on the mustard yellow tie of the doctor. 

“What...where’s Kiibo?” He asked, almost retched. His expression was a wall. 

The doctor eyed him calmly. It seemed as though he had decided something internally. In a fluid motion, he slipped all the photos off the bed and into the envelope, swerving his chair around. He pulled the drawer open. Ouma watched the envelope disappear between several other files. 

“He’s alive. But-“ he added sharply after seeing Ouma’s imploringly hopeful look, “he’s in critical condition.”

“So...I’m not a murderer,” Ouma laughed dejectedly as he fell back onto his bed, earning a creak from the springs under the mattress. “Yet.” 

“Mr. Ouma, the SUV rammed into you, not the other way around. And even if your friend died, you still wouldn’t be one.” 

“Whatever, Doc.”

Ouma thought otherwise. 

Indifferent, he yanked the blanket up to his shoulders and positioned himself sideways, staring at the wall. He tried imagining a window there. Maybe a bird would pass by. Or maybe he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, because there was a giant oak tree with leaves just as big covering the window, rustling in the breeze. With open eyes, imagining these proved to be challenging, but Ouma didn’t want to close them out of fear from reliving the crash and seeing the reality of Kiibo’s bloody, battered body gone limp. The wrecked Madza 3 was already proof enough. No need to salt the wound. 

“Mr. Ouma, please let me finish and listen.”

Ouma made no move but he listened. 

“Your friend may be in critical condition, but please rest assured, we’re trying our best to keep him stable. Believe me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Trust me, we’re trying our best.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Mr. Ouma, I acknowledge that it may be hard to think positively at the moment.”

“If you understand, then shut up.” 

“We already have the machines necessary to perform the mind upload before his body gives out—“ 

“What?” 

A finger pushed the lenses of his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he adopted a miffed face, as if Ouma’s reaction was typical. “He’s undergoing a mind upload.” 

“A mind upload.” Ouma bolted upright, and all apathy departed from his body. He gazed in horror at something the doctor couldn’t see. “A mind upload. Are you insane?”

“Mr. Ouma–” The doctor began.

“No!” 

It was the process of transferring one’s consciousness into a mechanical body, effectively making them a robot, but not stripping them of their humanity – rather, contesting death, or bargaining with the devil through human means justified by sympathy. As far as the public was concerned, robots were simply people in a different body. That’s how it was supposed to be. But the question of whether or not a person truly retained their persona during the transfer hung over everyone’s heads like a dull guillotine blade in the hands of a toddler. There was no way to prove it. Every day, robots were eternally subject to the throws and suspicion of society, tormented by the day they didn’t die. That’s why Ouma concluded that mind uploading should be avoided altogether. 

To him, this was worse than killing his friend. 

The meek nurse’s voice mumbling reverberated throughout his head. 

‘You and your friend look so young…’

Ouma broke out into a cold sweat. He toppled off the bed and his body cried out in pain, but he grit his teeth and endured it, hands clenching into fists. It felt like he was drowning. He crawled desperately towards the door through the sheer strength from his arms alone, and he was halfway there when the doctor tugged him off the floor and wrestled him back into his bed as gently as possible. Ouma punched and kicked and yelled but there was only so much a wounded, twiggy boy could do against an adult with a grip like steel. With his free hand, the doctor reached over and dialed a number on the phone by Ouma’s bed. 

“Hello. Yes, this is Doctor Munakata, requesting additional help in Room 320. The patient has entered a panicked state and needs to be subdued. The gas should do the trick. Bring it up.”

“Let go of me, you sick fuck!” 

The doctor was mechanical. “Mr. Ouma, there’s nothing you can do—”

“Don’t. Don’t fucking do it! He’s so young!” 

“The procedure is underway already.” His words drove into Ouma like blades. 

“Shit! Stop the fucking procedure!” Ouma spat venom. 

“We’re saving him.”

“You’re killing him,” Ouma choked out, his eyes manic. 

“We’re not.”

“You talk about saving lives but don’t you get that they’d rather die?!” 

“We refuse to let him die, Mr. Ouma.” The doctor explained, lifting a pacifying hand. 

Ouma recoiled. “You sick, heartless fuck!” 

The doctor rattled off on a tangent about the hospital’s mission and how Ouma’s insurance would cover the incident, but Ouma was no longer listening. His mind was utter chaos, and he couldn’t hear himself think. He was smothered by an onslaught of negative thoughts that he didn’t have the sense or the will to push down. ‘It’s my fault he’ll alone. He’ll be all alone. He’ll hate me. He’ll hate me. He hates me. He hates me. I can’t face him. It’s my fault.’

Whatever mental fortitude he had leftover crumbled at that moment. He wanted to melt into the floor and his organs to combust from the inside out. If he felt awful earlier, then now he felt downright revolting. Ouma was disgusted by himself. He wanted to rip his skin out and tear out all the hairs on his head. He’d never felt so flagrantly repulsive in his life, and he hated every fiber of his being.

Ouma wrenched his eyes shut, covered his ears, and shrieked. 

It was a primitive, feral noise that tore at his vocal chords and scraped the walls like knives, choking the entire room with nothing but pure agony and despair. If there had been windows present, they’d shatter. In a twisted sense, Ouma was a child who had been told he broke his favorite toy and it could never be fixed, so he did all he could. He screamed. He cried. He threw a tantrum. 

Guilt was a noxious thing. 

He must’ve been screeching for years, because when his screams finally died down to broken sobs, the backup the doctor requested was already flooding through the door into in his room, pinning his arms down so he lied spread-eagle. His legs were too scraped up to move. They pressed a gas mask onto his face. He attempted to shrug it off, but his half-hearted efforts were in vain as his world began to wane like a camera shifting in and out of focus. A circle of black shadows surrounded the corners of his vision, whispering, murmuring, humming. He thought they were watching him die. 

A sickeningly sweet aroma drifted to his nose. It made him think of a weapon Kiibo once described called mustard gas. He thought of how Kiibo smiled when he babbled on about wars like the history buff he was. How Kiibo’s mouth twitched when Ouma cracked a terrible joke. How Kiibo would rub his shoulder when he was unsure about something risky Ouma suggested. Ouma thought of the months he spent figuring out these little quirks so he could memorize them. 

‘Would he retain them after becoming a robot?’ he wondered. ‘Will he even have the capacity to hate me?’ 

Ouma’s body sagged at the notion that Kiibo would never be able to grieve himself. 

Ouma blacked out.

~

Ouma was discharged from the hospital the following morning at 7:06 AM. He refused to take a taxi back home and studied the subway lines instead, hopping from train to train. When he arrived home, the sky was turning orange, signaling that evening had come. His mom was still out working. The spare house keys were in a compartment Ouma’s dad built behind their mailbox, and he took them out for the first time in four years and entered his house. Ouma wrote a letter to his mom and left it on the dinner table for her to find later. He prepared a warm cup of milk and set it on the corner of the paper. 

Ouma left the town that night with the money from his father’s life insurance without saying goodbye.

~

When Ouma opened his eyes, he saw yellow. 

He had dozed off on the train ride back to his home town, a hand smushed against chin, supporting his head’s weight. Dark hair with purple highlights tickled his cheeks when his head leaned forward and banged against the window, mercilessly tearing Ouma out of his trance. He directed his rage at the air and shouted out a curse, eyebrows knit in irritation. Had there been other passengers in his car, Ouma assumed he’d be shushed right about now. But there weren’t, and that was precisely why he chose that train car. 

After rubbing the sore spot, Ouma turned to do a once over on his luggage. All he had was a navy blue suit case, and it remained in the velvety red seat next to him. A keychain of a die dangled on the side from one of the zippers. Ouma turned his head back towards the glass. 

Rows and rows of cornfields sped by, an assembly line of yellow and green blurs behind a low wooden fence. Ouma wondered drowsily what it would feel like to play hide and seek in there. He was short enough that he wouldn’t need to bother crouching to stay hidden. He’d probably win, and that’d be boring. Ouma sighed. The years never favored him in terms of height, but he supposed it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. 

Ouma leaned a little bit further to the side, and when he looked forward he could see the hidden figures of skyscrapers and office buildings behind the fog of Towa City coming into view. The cornfields grew sparse until cold cement sidewalks and roads replaced them, and those, too, were eaten by the fog as the train shot by. As he stared out the window, Ouma could hardly see anything anymore, and that’s how he knew he was closing in on the train station. 

A pre-recorded message played on the speakers of the train. 

“Now stopping at: Jabberwock Station. Now stopping at: Jabberwork Station.”

Ouma stretched his legs and arms out in his seat and threw on his white headphones as the announcement repeated itself. The ear pads were made of soft leather and covered his ears entirely, cushioning them like pillows. He didn’t play any songs on them though. The automated voice was blocked out, and that was all he wanted. 

Ouma stood carefully as the train began to slow. He pulled the sleeves of a bulky puffer jacket onto his arms. It was ivory and had a fur collar, and Ouma bought it the first day he was promoted to dice manager of at casino he now worked at. The jacket’s hem stopped right above his knees. The folds of his black pants zig-zagged down and disappeared where topline of his shoes met the fabric. He wore pure white converse and scuffed them across the train’s carpet before shoving his hands into his pockets. Ouma tended to like oversized clothes. They never restricted his movement or hugged his body or ordered him on how to act. They were just fluffy armor plates. 

He looked out the window again. The outside was no longer corny or foggy. The brick walls of the inside of the tunnel were dark as Ouma watched them come and go. The lights installed at the top of the tunnel were poor. Shadows flickered against Ouma’s face each time the train passed under them. 

Ouma made his way down the stairs, entering the train car where the doors would open. People trickled in from other cars and joined him. The train stopped. Ouma’s body was tugged to the side by the momentum, and his footing faltered for a second. Righting himself, he stared listlessly out the windows of the doors. Everyone else stared at their devices. 

The doors finally opened and everyone poured out of the train like water from a floodgate, and while Ouma was the first to get off the train, he waited on the yellow line as people hurried past him. He wasn’t really sure what he was waiting for, really. It had just felt right. Ouma only moved out of the way when a man with a particularly sharp elbow knocked him aside, causing him to stumble from his position at the doors. One of them mumbled a sorry, and Ouma wasn’t sure if it was him or the man with the elbow. 

The action was so very Towa-City-like, Ouma couldn’t get mad. 

He walked into the familiar hallway and up the stairs, melding with the crowd and its movement. At the topmost step, a cold nighttime breeze rushed his face and Ouma shut his eyes. It ghosted through his jacket and shirt, sending goosebumps all over his skin. He inhaled and exhaled deeply. The taste of the air was mundane but nostalgic. Ouma opened his eyes to the sky. Darkness swept the vast expanse and the stars were bullied out by the city's light pollution. Ouma couldn't pinpoint any one spot in the sky, and the harder he looked, the harder it became. It was like trying to stare into someone's eyes. He was never sure which one he was supposed to be looking into, so he ended going back and forth between the two, only for the person to have the same problem. 

Ouma sighed. Ever since he got off the train, he hadn’t been able to name the uneasiness he felt. But now, standing in the crisp, wintry atmosphere of Towa City, bathing in a storefront’s neon lights, he knew what is was. He was feeling sentimental. 

Ouma thought it didn’t suit him all that well.

He took a seat on a nearby sidewalk bench beside a broken streetlamp. Intricate swirls and leaves were engraved onto the armrests. In front of him was a road. Cars trapped in static traffic honked nonstop as though they were an orchestra miscommunicating, yelling over each other, all trying to get their piece in at once. It was nothing like the upright avenues of Novoselic. 

Novoselic was the city Ouma had moved to. His first job there and simultaneously his first job ever was work as a convenience store clerk. The store was three blocks away from the park he slept at and five blocks away from the apartment complex he later rented a room in. Novoselic was veined with subway lines but not as intensely as Towa City. Ouma was always a single train ride away from his second job. He obtained his second job by means of pure luck. A casino was built in an aggressively empty quarter of the city a decade before Ouma moved there, a place of deceit and distractions and a breath of fresh air within a city founded on morality. The owner took pity on poor little Ouma Kokichi and his grocery clerk job. It wasn’t skill or tenacity or obligation that caught his attention. Ouma was just lucky. And that was all he needed to work in a casino. 

Ouma pulled his phone out of his puffy jacket pocket and swiped through his contacts. His thumb landed on ‘Kaede Akamatsu’ and pressed on the text icon. He scrolled to the bottom of all her ignored and forgotten messages and began his own. 

Kokichi [10:02 PM]: You there? 

Ouma sincerely hoped she’d respond soon. He hoped she still lived in Towa City for that matter. He hadn’t talked to her in three years, so he wouldn’t know if she moved or not. 

Kaede [10:02 PM]: wtf. kokichi??

Kaede [10:02 PM]: i can’t believe this. i cannot believe this. where r u, i need to beat u dead 

Ouma [10:03 PM]: That doesn’t matter. Can I stay at your place for a while? (づ￣ ³￣)づ

Kaede [10:03 PM]: r u in towa city?

Ouma [10:03 PM]: Yup

Kaede [10:4 PM]: alright but i’m asking you why later and if you don’t respond honestly to any of my questions you’re out on the streets

Kaede [10:04 PM]: don’t bring any friends over either

Ouma [10:04 PM]: Oh drats. Now my plans for sabotaging your day and kidnapping you are ruined…

Kaede [10:04 PM]: kokichi

Ouma [10:04 PM]: I won’t. You really think I’d actually bring a stranger to your place?

Kaede [10:04 PM]: i’m not gonna answer that

Ouma [10:04 PM]: Fair enough

Ouma [10:04 PM]: But…you really think I’d stay at your place if I had someone else with me? So conceited (¬_¬)

Kaede [10:05 PM]: just shut up kokichi ok 

Kaede [10:05 PM]: oh and i’m sooooo telling shuichi ur here!! 

Ouma [10:05 PM]: …Do you have to? 

Kaede [10:05 PM]: roof or no roof

Ouma [10:05 PM]: Ugh, geez, fine (；一_一)

A minute passed by in silence. Another text from Kaede popped up. It had the address of the apartment complex she lived in and her apartment number. Much to his relief, Ouma noticed the address wasn’t too far from the Jabberwock Station. It was within walking distance. 

Ouma [10:06 PM]: Thanks 

Ouma [10:06 PM]: I knew you had a heart somewhere beneath that freakish piano persona! 

She didn’t text back after that. Ouma chuckled to himself and pocketed his phone. He found himself feeling relatively lighter, but only enough not to feel nauseous anymore. Talking to Kaede had helped Ouma in a way. He swung back in time to his college days when things were simpler - when he was an adult who didn’t feel like an adult, a child who feared freedom just as much as he wanted it. But if someone asked him what he was now, Ouma couldn’t answer them. He’d have to ignore them. 

Ouma stood from the bench and it gave a rusty, metal creak. He walked down the streets. He knew them like the back of his hand. Christmas snow started to dust the streets and the top of Ouma’s head and shoulders. He pulled a scarf out of his suitcase and wrapped around himself, so the thick-knitted wool hid part of his face. 

Forty-five minutes later he was shivering at the door step of room no. 322, Kaede’s apartment. 

The building itself wasn’t all that grand. Behind him was a large, square-shaped space that was the courtyard. A flimsy, black guardrail was the only thing separating Ouma from the hallway of the second floor and a short-lived fall into a patch of grass. The walls were encrusted in grainy, beige paint. Cold, hard pavement froze past the barriers that were the soles of Ouma’s converse. Ouma called these type of living conditions deplorable. He himself lived in a similar state just twenty-four hours ago. So he had the right to call them deplorable. 

Lightly he rapped on the door with the back of his knuckles. Ouma took a step back and waited. The door clicked and Kaede opened the door hesitantly, then firmly. 

Ouma pulled down his scarf to speak. “Took you long enough!” 

Kaede’s eyes were wide and astonished. A hand twitched, hovering between her and Ouma, as if she wanted to touch him to make sure he was real. Ouma kind of wanted her to make sure he was real, too. But she lowered it a second later.

“Well? Are you going to let me in or what? I’m freezing my dick off here!” Ouma shivered for emphasis. His suitcase stood diligently by his side.

"I forgot how much of a brat you are," Kaede said. She angled her body and let him pass anyway. "Here, I'll get your suit case for you."

"Thanks mom," he called out over his shoulder. 

Ouma's suitcase had diligently stood outside in the chilly air until Kaede picked it up by the handle and lugged it into her apartment's genkan before shutting the door locked. 

Kaede was dressed in a baby blue nightgown made of silk threads that shone like a spider web. Blonde hair flowed behind her back in wavy clumps. Delicate fingers clutched at the ends of her sleeves that extended an inch past her wrists. Ouma thought she didn’t change a bit. 

Kaede fixed him with a glare. "Don't call me that, it feels weird."

“You always feel weird about everything, Kaede. Especially Shuichi. You should fix that.” There was a wicker basket full of oranges placed at the center of Kaede’s dining table. Ouma snatched an orange and started tossing it in his hand as he threw his body onto the couch. The leather sagged considerably under his weight. “Ugh, why is this place so worn-out? Do you actually live in this dump?” He pointed at a painting. “What joke is that?” 

“A painting…?” 

“It’s hung way too high,” Ouma pointed out. 

Kaede reached for the orange. “I know you studied architecture and all, but I actually like this place. And you were supposed to take your shoes off first.” 

Ouma stretched on the couch, a bundled mess of white, and moved the orange further away from her grasp. “That’s such a drag. Who cares about order?”

“I do,” she said. “I like my carpet dirt-free, thank you very much.” 

“I don’t remember you being this boring.” Despite his words, Ouma complied. He pushed his converse off with his feet. Hands were for people who took charge. Ouma never took charge. The shoes fell to the grey nylon carpet and one of them toppled onto its side. 

“Thank you,” Kaede said. 

“Don’t you want your orange back?” He asked.

“…Can I have my orange back?” 

Ouma rested his hands behind his head with a smug look. “No. I don’t feel like giving it back. Ask again later.”

Kaede gave up on retrieving her orange with a huff. She held her elbows in her hands as if she were cold. Lavender eyes sunk to the corner. “Kokichi…stop dodging the issue.” 

“What? Your orange? I never knew you felt so strongly towards oranges,” Ouma smirked. “Poor Shuichi. Poor, poor, poor Shuichi. Never knew that his girl preferred sexual intercourse with nature’s finest gifts.” 

“We’re finally dating now.” 

“That's great, Kaede, but I don’t – huh?!” Ouma looked aghast. “You guys fucked already?!”

“That’s not important!” Kaede was blushing furiously. “Kokichi, you said you’d answer my questions!” 

Ouma raised his eyebrows. “Have you asked me any yet?”

“I haven’t.” 

He brought the orange closer to his face and squinted at it. “Are you going to?”

“Are you going to answer them?”

“Yes. See, I’m already doing fantastic! You’re an awful friend. How could you have doubted me?”

Kaede took a seat next to Ouma on the couch and played with her fingers nervously, facing the ground. Moonlight seeped in through the panes of her window, mingling with the artificial light the desk lamp produced. 

Ouma was sitting in a room with aliens. These aliens could make all the noises they wanted, use all the gestures they needed, but they would never truly what it meant if Ouma asked, ‘How was your day?’ 

The thought made Ouma feel a bit lonely. He smiled instinctively to counter the emotion. 

Kaede caught Ouma’s eyes. She smiled back, and Ouma hated how genuine hers was. 

“So, how’ve you been for these past three years?” she asked. 

“Awful. Nothing eventful ever happened. I was lonely and felt like I’d vomit every single day.” Ouma’s mouth remained still and impassive. A second later it broke out into a grin. “Just kidding! I moved to Novoselic. Nothing’s better than a change of scenery. Speaking of which, you need a change of scenery. This room’s décor sucks ass.” 

“Décor comment aside, this is a good start,” Kaede said. 

“What are you, my therapist or something?”

“I can be.” 

Ouma rolled his eyes. “Great.”

Kaede raised a hand and made to swat at Ouma’s legs, eyebrows creased, when she changed her mind. Her hand moved down to smoothen her nightgown. “What have you been doing at Novoselic?” 

“Living. Breathing. Excreting. Eating. Sleeping. You know, the usual.” Ouma watched her from his peripherals. 

She was still smiling. Her patience wrangled Ouma’s neck like a rope. 

“I got a job,” he confessed, forcing himself to talk. “At a casino named Dice. I worked from the bottom up. Everyone was jealous of me. I spat in their faces after they spat in mine. It was totally satisfying to see their faces green with envy just because the underdog beat them.” 

Kaede hummed and leaned back into the couch, hands folded neatly on her lap. “I’m surprised you didn’t pursue architecture. But that’s wonderful.” 

“It’s not. I lied.” 

Kaede hummed again.

“I lied about working from the bottom up,” Ouma admitted. The hand holding the orange came up. He scrutinized the fruit. “I just got lucky. Dumb luck, that’s what it was. I couldn’t even get a job through my own means. Someone thought my life was so sad that they gave me a job out of pity. I must have looked like a loser.” His voice escalated dangerously. “That’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? Say it’s pathetic, Kaede! Make me feel awful!”

“Why did you come back to Towa City?” Kaede said instead. 

Ouma kicked his feet out and his standard demeanor returned. “Tch. You're no fun."

"Kokichi," she warned.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, lady. We were given a Christmas break early. I thought it might be fun to take a little vacation and get out of town. Novoselic is very uptight, you know. We don’t get vacations very often. So when we do get them, they’re pretty damn long.” 

“I know. But why choose Towa City?”

Ouma angled his head to deny Kaede a glimpse at his face. “Maybe I just wanted to visit my mother after a few years? And maybe I don’t want to impose on her so I’m staying at your place?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Who knows?” Ouma said. 

Kaede chose her words carefully before speaking, tucking her legs against her chest as she wrapped her arms around them. “Kokichi, you know…that orange you're holding…that basket of oranges is from Kiibo.” 

Ouma dropped the orange. It plummeted to the carpet and rolled next to his converse. Absent-mindedly he dragged his hand across a pant leg as if he were wiping a substance off. “Oh. Is that so.” 

“Mhm. They’re for good luck,” she said sweetly, ignoring the waste of food. "He gave them to me last weekend."

“That’s awfully dull,” he said. Ouma titled his head down, but his eyes were trained on a high spot on the wall. 

Kaede tried making eye contact. “Have you talked to him lately?”

“Nope,” Ouma said, drawing circles in the air, his eyes moving to the side.

“I can tell he misses you.” 

Silence.

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Ouma asked, unimpressed.

Kaede traced images in the silk of her nightgown, her eyes directed towards Ouma. “He misses you a lot, Kokichi. Shuichi and I missed you a lot too. But Kiibo isn’t the same. It’s like something broke when you left.”

Ouma barked out a laugh as he gazed out the window. “Yeah, no shit. Betcha a wire snapped in his brain because he’s a robot now.”

“I can’t say it enough. I really can’t. He misses you. You don’t understand.” It sounded like she was begging to someone, someone who wasn’t in the room.

“I think the one who doesn’t understand here is you,” Ouma said, frown replaced by the slight upturn of the corners his mouth. “I know this game. What’s gone is gone, Kaede. Some relationships aren’t meant to last. Don’t try to go and play hero, it doesn’t fit you. It’s frankly disgusting." Ouma got off the couch and stood. "Now, I’ll ask you again. Is that all you wanted to say?” 

Kaede exhaled, wearing a defeated look. It wasn’t an expression Ouma normally saw aimed towards him, usually reserved for Shuichi or the piano. "I'm not telling Kiibo you're here. This is your problem to sort out. I’ll make sure Shuichi doesn’t tell either."

“Lovely. It’s not, but lovely.”

Ouma walked into Kaede’s bedroom and temporarily claimed it as his own. He went to bed feeling as though he had been doused in oil. He dreamt of lighters clicking at him, chasing him, crying at him. 

~

The next day, Ouma woke up at 12:00 in the afternoon. It was Wednesday. He didn’t feel very hungry.

It took him about a minute to remember the events that transpired the other night. Ouma fell back onto a pillow, ready to close his eyes and wipe his memory of it all, when he realized he was in a girl’s bedroom, and that he probably should respect her privacy. Kaede was the host, not him. 

Her bedroom was plain and ordinary. A single bed was cornered in the room. The headrest had a ghastly green hue that didn’t match the theme of the room at all. In fact, there was no theme. Next to the bed was a wooden bookshelf painted blue. The grey nylon carpet ran from the living room into the bedroom. If memory served, the only place Ouma didn’t see the carpet was in the tiled kitchen. The bedroom walls were a lavender purple that peeled just by looking at it. Kaede had a box T.V. in her room right in the center. It sat on the floor like a sad little toddler. She had a low, unused bedside desk in another corner of the room, so Ouma wasn’t sure why she wasn’t utilizing that. 

Nothing made sense. Ouma thought his eyes were hemorrhaging. So he pretended the room was gorgeous. 

He felt somewhat bad for forcing Kaede to sleep on the couch last night, so he sought her out to clarify that he’d be taking the couch for the rest of his stay, only to be greeted by a sticky note pasted to the freezer. He had almost missed it. The freezer was black and grey and insanely small, and it only went up to Ouma’s chest. A pair of keys laid on top of it. 

Rubbing the weariness from his face, Ouma crouched down to read it. 

‘Have to go to work! Left you a copy of the apartment’s keys. Don’t lose them. :)’ 

Of course she was out working. She had a life, unlike him. 

Ouma pocketed the keys in his pant pocket. He searched the apartment for his suitcase and found it secluded inside Kaede’s utility closet. He dragged it out and left it beside the couch, the keychain’s metal clinking softly against the zipper. Satisfied with its location, Ouma went back into Kaede’s room, put his puffy jacket back on, and stood by the front door. He slipped into his white converse, which Kaede had lined up by the genkan. Ouma wasn’t surprised. Kaede had always been organized in college, so he wasn’t sure why he thought otherwise. 

He took his phone out and texted Kaede. 

Ouma [12:17 PM]: Hey, you could have left me a text instead of leaving a note you know. Why are you so old fashioned? (；一_一)

She didn’t respond after three minutes, so Ouma presumed she was busy. 

Ouma [12:20 PM]: I’m gonna head out of the apartment for some fresh air. It's too cramped inside this hell hole

Ouma put his phone away and walked outside, locking the door before making his way down to the first floor. He went outside the apartment complex and pretended to lunge to get the blood flowing. He let out a condensed breath that dissipated into the air. Snow fluttered every which way and littered the sidewalks and roads. The roads were deserted. Ouma thought of his afternoon stroll as a trek through a white desert. 

Without any particular plan in mind, Ouma walked aimlessly. While it wasn’t the best plan, it was better than pretending the apartment didn’t give him a headache. He shuddered at the memory. 

Ouma was about an hour into his walk, and he got about as far as the park when the breeze against his neck and reddened ears told him that he needed his scarf back at the apartment. He left his headphones there too. He turned around and began the journey back. Ouma was missing his tunes anyway. 

He was just a few blocks away from the apartment complex when a distinct red caught his eye. Brick red. The smooth finish of plaster. Tangled designs of vines swirling into the side of a wooden chair. It was the corner café that lurked in the corner of an intersection, exposed to the entire world yet glanced over by majority – Ouma’s old haunt, Future’s Café.

He and Kiibo used to frequent it. 

Ouma’s stomach grumbled. Before he could steer himself in the other direction, he was looking left and right and crossing the road. He had no idea what he was doing. Maybe it was a sense of longing that drew him in. A sense of acceptance. Either way, his mind screamed at him to head back to Kaede’s apartment, to drop in the middle of the road and get hit by a car, to go anywhere else but that café. But Ouma was always an impulsive person, and he walked right past the door into Future’s Café. 

Ouma felt that he had jumped back in time as he plunged deeper in. Inside, it was bright and soothing. Polished wood tabletops glistened under the outside light, pouring through the spotless windows that stretched from top to bottom. He could almost pretend that he was a college kid again, waiting to meet Kiibo at their designated table in the back, away from the entrance and prying eyes. When Ouma spotted the table, he could see that a couple had already taken their seats there. They looked even younger than Ouma, and people still mistook him for a teenager. For a brief moment, Ouma thought the couple had peeked at him and laughed. 

Ouma grimaced, feeling stupid. He shook the thought out of his head as he entered the queue behind two kids. When it was his turn, he ordered an espresso. Among all the other choices, he deemed it the most adult drink on the menu. He knew he wasn’t fond of bitter drinks, disliked the intrusive bitter taste that stayed even after he drank water, but maybe he’d learn to like it today. 

The cashier handed him his receipt, but Ouma waved his hands dismissively, saying he didn’t want it. Ouma slid into a chair across at the opposite end of the couple’s table. He hands sat awkwardly exposed on the table, so he buried them in his puffy jacket pockets. He found that it didn’t make him feel much better though. Soon he felt under the weather. 

He must have been having cardiovascular issues that day. The knot in his chest refused to leave. 

Fifteen minutes lumbered by on chains that rattled like hell every second inside Ouma’s eardrums. To his alleviation, they shattered once he heard someone call out the name of his coffee. He put his phone back into his pocket. He had been looking up a map of the area to see if there were any nearby casinos. He stood with haste, eager to leave the café. 

His converse peeped as he rounded the corner when Ouma came to a halt. 

“Ah, sir, is this your…espresso…” 

The first thing he saw was the mass of spiky white hair. The fringe swept low, practically concealing blue hues that didn’t quite match the baby blue of Kaede’s nightgown. They were lighter, or maybe clearer, but they stood-out in their own cryptic way all the same. Thick, black lines ran down, beginning at the bottom of the eyes and ending at the base of the chin like deep-seated scars, though Ouma was aware it was the signature mark of a robot. A slate hand holding Ouma’s espresso confirmed his suspicions. 

He saw red staining white all over again. His blood went cold.

All he did was take a step back when the world spun and whirled and twisted so fast that Ouma got vertigo. His vision was swimming. He saw the marble counter and then the ground, and he stumbled, a hand pushing off the ground as he launched into a sprint for the door. Tables and chairs were knocked out of his way and shoved to the side. Dimly he could hear people yelling at him and wondered if all the curses racing through his mind were leaving his mouth, too. 

Ouma hadn’t completely realized that he had ran into someone until he was already on the floor, leaning on a knee, his other leg folded underneath him. Sweat beaded the sides of his forehead. His hands were shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold. Ouma wanted to cry all of a sudden. 

A hand landed on his shoulder, tentative and gentle. 

“Kokichi…?” 

Ouma blinked. His mouth twitched, and something inside of him drowned. “Hey, Kiiboy! It’s good to see you!”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, that was long. And cliffhangery. Sorry! XD
> 
> I had a particularly fun time writing Kaede and Ouma as bros though...I hope you didn't get too bored!  
> The real kiibouma action will happen in the following chapters, don't worry! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! :)


End file.
